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Anita Diamant's work is a lovely story teller. Day after Night is based on the real story of displaced Jewish people in an internment camp in Palestine following the end of WWII. The book follows four young women who are coping with the loss of their families while trying to make a new life in Palestine/ Israel.

Loved the Red Tent so that is why I was eager to read this book. I found the characters stilted so there was no connection to them. The story did not flow so I often had to go back and check to see who was who. Overall, a boring and disappointing read.

This book is based on the true escape of illegal immigrants being held by the British government in Isreal after the second world war. I was unaware of the history of Atlit prior to reading this book. It is a gentle read, highlighting the lives of several woman who had different experiences of the war and the interaction between them in the detention camp. There is no drama to the escape, as life has been much, much too dramatic in during the war years for these women. Truely an interesting account of immigration into Isreal after the second world war.

I really enjoyed this book. As with Diamant's other works, she concentrates on the emotional experiences of women, and at times it is very powerful. The book does not seem meant to provide a balanced view of a political situation or a particularly action-filled plot, but it does offer insight into this time period and this group of people, which I suspect are not as well known as other events and people in the post-WWII era.

This book came highly recommended but I'm sorry to say that it didn't grab me. There were moments when I thought that the story was going to take off, but then the chapter ended abruptly and the author moved on to something new. I also found the characters to be quite stilted - I don't know whether that was deliberate since none of them had much trust in others after what they had been through, but it left me wanting more.

The story was good, the characters well-drawn, the plot absorbing. Told from the point of view of four women, the story takes place in 1945 inside Atlit, a detention camp for illegal immigrants, i.e. Holocaust survivors, in what was then British Palestine. Stories of life at the camp are interspersed with flashbacks relating the various suffering the women went through in Europe. Their stories are engaging, heartbreaking, and the women likeable, even lovable. So why only 3 stars? I didn't like the pro-Zionist slant. I don't take a side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because I think both sides are wrong. The only time in this book that the Palestinian question was addressed was in a conversation in which one young Zionist complained that none of the literature or kibbutzniks urging Jews to come to Palestine mentioned that there were Arabs already living there. This was met by the argument that Arabs were dirty peasants who weren't doing anything with the land anyway. The point of view of the Palestinians is completely ignored. The only "enemy" that is given a voice is the British commander of the camp, and his loyalty is so divided that he can hardly be called an enemy. Less patriotic drivel and more thoughtful analysis would have made this a much better book.